John Thune met with reporters yesterday in Arkansas, while on a trip to support Senate candidate, John Boozman.
Thune said his focus is on 2010, but that there "will be a time for consideration of things beyond that".
REPORTER: As people look ahead to 2012, your name is a name that's going to come up a lot as a potential Presidential candidate. Is that something you're looking at right now? What's your thinking on looking at that?
THUNE: Well, right now, my focus is the mid-term elections, and trying to get quality people like John Boozman elected. I think the best thing that we can do right now, the best thing that anybody -- anybody including [those] who might have aspirations beyond the 2010 elections -- needs to be very focused on doing everything that we can to restore some checks and balances in Washington.
And the only way now that we're going to put some breaks on the run-away agenda that President Obama is carrying forward ,and that his allies in Congress are supporting is to elect more Senators like John Boozman, so I think that's going to be my focus up through the November elections, and, hopefully, that will be a very good evening for us. We'll pick up some important seats in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, and a lot of other races across the country.
And then there will be a time for consideration of things beyond that.
REPORTER: What would be your time-table for making that decision?
THUNE: Well, I just haven't -- I don't have a timetable. My timetable right now is [turning to Boozman seated next to him] -- is it November 2?
And really I'm just focused near term right now, and I really do want to do everything I can to help people like John get elected.
If you watch the vid (via Jason Tolbert), he doesn't chuckle it off and, actually, seems fairly serious about the question.
